Is this Todays Army??

[<Decaturvlp@aol.com>]

EARL Wrote:
In there is a very interesting letter from a Frank S. Stabler mia@prodigy.net 
.......sent to the Center for Stategic and International Studies in 
Washington, D.C.  ........... that discusses what Stabler perceives what is 
wrong and how to fix things up.
Earl

EARL!  This was a great letter - (probably be the end of that officers 
career, too!)  I did a cut & paste as a lot of our members are are not SFA or 
have access to the members only section of the SF website.....
From what I've seen, nearly everything in the letter applies to the other 
services, too - some of it has even managed to worm it's way into the Marine 
Corps.......

Subj: Is this todays Army? 
Date: 5/10/01 7:12:15 AM Eastern Daylight Time
 From:  mia7556a@prodigy.net (Franklin S Stabler)
To:  Undisclosed-Recipient:@pimout3-int.prodigy.net;; 
Is this todays Army
 Aviation Regiment CMR 477 Box 1551 APO AE 09165 
27 March 2001 
Center for Strategic and International Studies 
1800 K Street N.  W Washington DC, 20006 
Dear CSIS, 
I read with great interest your report entitled "American Military Culture in 
the 21st Century." I thought you might be interested in my thoughts as I read 
the report.

For your information, I am a single white male Army battalion operations 
officer, thirty-nine years old, no dependents.  I have seventeen years of 
service in Korea, Europe, the Balkans and the US, to include time in the 2nd 
Infantry, 101st Air Assault, and 1st Armored Divisions.  I also served as an 
observer/controller at the Joint Readiness Training Center, and have 
instructed at West Point and the Aviation Officer Basic Course.

1.  In my opinion, Army basic training is no longer a rite of passage.  I 
cannot write with any authority on what occurs there, but weekly I receive 
the graduates.  New soldiers are increasingly undisciplined, rebellious, and 
more concerned with their rights than their responsibilities.  They often 
have little sense of teamwork or duty.  My suspicion is that the "Army of 
One" mentality (in place long before the phrase was coined) is teaching them 
to ask not what they can do for their country, but what their country can do 
for them.  Army recruiting strategy with its offers of money and more money 
is where this pathology begins.

Since there is apparently little quality control in basic training, active 
units receive, relatively unmodified, the raw product of American Society.
I would prefer to see 
(A) Recruiting based on the Marine model, because one gets what one asks for. 
 The USMC asks for young men who wish to serve their nation and challenge 
themselves, while the Army asks for people who want money.  
(B) Even if it means a smaller Army, I would prefer to see some quality 
control in basic training.  In short, if recruits do not meet rigid standards 
of ethics, behavior, and performance, they should not be allowed into the 
service, period.  
(C) Basic training that is a tradition based and challenging rite of passage. 
 Bottom line: Recruits must join the Army, not the other way around.

2.  I do not agree that soldiers identify with the Army as the report 
contends.  Junior officers and soldiers identify with their small units, and 
senior officers and NCOs with their staffs (commanders and command sergeants 
major excepted).  I believe that the importance of service identity is 
overstated, and that now is the time to transition to one service. 
The payoff in procurement and standardization would be immense, without 
damaging unit cohesion.  The other side of the coin, however, is that morale 
is so poor and unit cohesion at the lower levels so weak due to years of over 
commitment, under resourcing, micromanagement, and social engineering, that 
morale needs some intensive shoring up.  I believe there are some ways to do 
this: 
(A) Give us back our officer and NCO clubs.  They may not be efficient, but 
they are effective in building esprit de corps and strengthening the 
ever-weakening line between the ranks.  
(B)Power down.  Our company commanders are no longer that, but instead 
"company managers."

Let's get brigade commanders and division commanding generals out of company 
physical training programs, and instead focused on directing their staffs to 
do more than crank out endless tasking's which do not support battalion 
essential combat tasks.  
(C) Allow units to develop and propagate unit specific symbols and insignia 
at the battalion level.  
(D) Recruit regionally and field units on the now defunct COHORT model.  
(E) Organize in multifunctional regiments on the USMC model.

3.  I do not believe as the report contends that we have demonstrated 
military prowess in Desert Storm, Bosnia, or Kosovo.  The report did not 
mention Somalia in this vein, a conflict that demonstrates how bad things can 
get when we face a resolute enemy.  Therefore, the "lessons of 
success"learned in the Balkans and Desert Storm need some perspective. 
What we have demonstrated is that because we have a lot of money, we can 
overcome an enemy that does not fight, or is more concerned with criminal 
activities than military engagements.  I believe that, should we face a 
resolute enemy in open combat, the results would be catastrophic (Bunker 
Hill, Bull Run, Kasserine Pass, Task Force Smith, Vietnam, Somalia).  
America, between its major wars, has a long history of demanding efficiency 
rather than effectiveness from its Armed Forces.
Unfortunately, the Armed Forces are not IBM or Microsoft, nor are they the 
Department of Interior or Bureau of Weight and Measures. 
Efficiency rather than effectiveness in peacetime translates to heavy 
casualties in the opening weeks of the next real conflict.

4.  I was interested in the comment of the report that "military culture by 
definition must differ significantly from civil culture in a democratic 
society." I could not agree more, which is why I am perplexed at the 
Herculean efforts in the last ten years to civilianize the military.

5.  Beware the fidelity of survey data.  The atmosphere of fear in the Army 
is impossible to overstate.  Years of conditioning to zero-defects and fear 
of offending have resulted in answers to survey questions that will be 
generally lukewarm at worst.  More importantly, survey data is manipulated by 
the chain of command.  While I was in Kosovo, yet another of a seemingly 
endless line of "Blue Ribbon Panels" traveled there to sound a group of 
captains reference retention.  Prior to the arrival of the panel, the senior 
officers dictated that no maintenance or headquarters company commanders 
would participate, knowing that these are the most thankless command 
positions.  Additionally, the senior officers further weeded by name the 
remaining line commanders.
The best survey or interview is the one in which the interviewee does not 
realize he is being interviewed.  If you want to know what the Army is 
thinking, just listen to soldiers converse in bars.  Pay particular attention 
to junior NCOs and officers.

6.  Because captain retention is so poor, Department of the Army has chosen 
to make captains from lieutenants at three years of service.
Additionally, the selection rate for captain was this year 99%.  This 
decision is typical of the kind of short-sited decision making common at 
senior levels.  The long term result is incompetent captains, whose poor 
leadership creates disgruntled soldiers and NCOs who resign or do not 
reenlist.  The captains themselves, frustrated that they cannot perform as 
expected, will also resign as soon as they can.  Recommend fewer officers of 
higher quality.
If this means a smaller Army, so be it.

7.  Casualty and risk aversion, euphemized in the Army as "force protection," 
have expanded beyond all logical proportion.  In Kosovo, I actually heard a 
brigade commander say "The worst thing we can do here is discharge a weapon." 
 I tend to take the more traditional view that the worst thing a military 
force can do is fail in its mission.

8.  Commanders and other leaders within the Army are daily faced with the 
following conundrum: Follow the regulations, or accomplish the mission.
Our penchant for risk aversion and micromanagement has done away with 
judgment, while regulations reproduce themselves at an alarming rate.  The 
cynicism and stress on integrity the above conundrum creates is a huge burden.
One of the reasons junior officers join the Army is for the opportunity to 
exercise their judgment.  If platoon leaders are not allowed to do this, why 
have them?  Put a pile of regulations in their chairs.  Soldiers requiring 
management can consult the regulations, judgment no longer required.

9.  "Proper" race and gender relations, currently propagated in the Army by 
the much despised and canned "Consideration of Others" program, has 
guaranteed the poorest possible social climate.  We have taught a generation 
of soldiers to see themselves not primarily as soldiers, but as 
African-Americans who happen to be soldiers, or females who happen to be 
soldiers.  Worse yet, we have taught them not to be polite and respectful, 
but instead to carry chips on their shoulders, searching for someone to 
offend them.  The result in the loss of unit cohesion has been devastating as 
soldiers are isolated in social fear.  Additionally, the never-ending stream 
of "African-American Months" and "Asian-Pacific American Months"
has done nothing more but accentuate differences.  Recommend we have 
"American Soldier Year" and be done with it.  The self-fulfilling prophecies 
created by racial and gender hypersensitivity are assisting in the 
destruction of morale.

10.  Technology, as useful as it is, has helped to create slaves to 
perfection and intense micromanagers.  The man-hours wasted on just the right 
color for PowerPoint presentations number in the millions, while subordinate 
commands await the "perfect" operations order.  Junior officers watch senior 
officers slave away on presentations for generals and ask themselves "Do I 
want to be doing that in three years?" Perhaps if the generals would refuse 
to accept this kind of waste, the colonels would follow suit.
Additionally, nobody wants a corps commander in their tank or cockpit with 
them.
Recommend we stop the search for real time terrestrial omniscience at the 
higher levels, and start trusting our subordinates again.  Human nature 
dictates that what can be known will be known.  The question is, just who 
needs to know it?  Does the theater commander really need a monthly report on 
venereal disease cases in platoon X?  I think not, but he gets one by name 
and social security number.

11.  We have entered an interesting and twisted period in military sociology 
when abuse is not defined by the institution or the senior, but rather by the 
subordinate.  The ramifications of this environment are self-evident.
Schofield's venerated definition of discipline is often quoted to justify 
this position: "The discipline which makes the soldiers of a free country 
reliable in battle is not to be gained by harsh or tyrannical treatment."
Nowhere in this statement does Schofield indicate that the private soldier 
should define "harsh and tyrannical."

12.  The Army has long been wedded to what I have come to think of as the 
"Chase your tail" method of training.  As we move from execution to 
execution, the training of subordinates suffers.  We do so much so rapidly 
that little is done correctly.  We "check the block" and move on to the next 
task.  I recently saw a corps G-3's annual training calendar, of which he was 
exceedingly proud.  Not a block of empty space on it.  When then, do the 
division, brigade, battalion, and company commanders, not to mention platoon 
leaders and NCOs, have time to train as they wish?  Either the Corps G-3 
knows every platoon's training needs better than platoon leaders, or there is 
something very wrong.  Here in USAREUR my battalion requires 
397 days to meet the annual training requirements placed on us by higher 
headquarters.
Simultaneously, my battalion services endless garrison support tasking's and 
those of higher headquarters to resource someone else's training.
Meanwhile, company commanders are chided by general officers for not giving 
their soldiers predictability.  One does not know whether to laugh or cry.
The solution for this problem is simple...slow down.  We can do a few things 
very well or we can do a great many things poorly.  There is no middle 
ground.  Long ago the military developed the concept of main and supporting 
efforts, as well as mission essential tasks.  If we would employ these 
concepts, everything would not be a priority, and unit focus would not shift 
from day to day.  Movement is not necessarily progress, nor is constant 
reorganization.

13.  The study made much of married soldiers and soldiers with dependents, 
asserting that these are stabilizing influences.  Apparently no one 
interviewed any company commander known to me, some of whom spend upwards of 
half their time dealing with family abuse, teens in trouble, dependent 
related alcohol and drug problems, unwed pregnant soldiers, single soldiers 
who have no plans to care for their children in the event they deploy, etc., 
etc.  I remember several years ago a USMC general suggesting that junior 
Marines should not be married.  He was pilloried in the press, but I think he 
was correct.  Recommend that the services accept no first term married 
soldiers, and that all unwed pregnancies be immediately discharged.

14.  Soldiers generally are not opposed to deployments.  The problem lies in 
the perceived value of the deployment.  If I am to ask my soldiers to 
separate from their dependents for six months once every two years, I must 
give them a good reason to do so.  Police work in Kosovo is not what I 
consider worthy of that kind of sacrifice.  We do more, but it is meaning 
less.  I cannot overstate the cynicism that this situation creates.

15.  I similarly cannot stress enough the importance of swift, bold decisions 
to solve these problems, or at least to acknowledge them.  I am aware that 
the Army is a large organization averse to change.  I am similarly aware, 
however, that many of these problems were apparent ten years ago.
Executive summary after executive summary, panel after panel, committee after 
committee, task force after task force, with no tangible results other than 
new headgear (make no mistake, even the lowliest private sees that pitiful 
measure for what it is).  Soldiers have lost patience.  Having taught at West 
Point, I maintain an active correspondence with dozens of junior officers I 
met there.  I do not know one who is planning on staying in the army past his 
initial commitment.  Company commanders are refusing second commands, and 
captains are refusing first commands in favor of resignation.
Lieutenant colonels and colonels are also refusing commands.
These actions were very rare...almost unthinkable ten years ago, yet they are 
all around us today.  We have a problem that requires serious effort.
Our greatest threat is not criminals in Kosovo, weapons of mass destruction, 
or Osama Bin Laden.  Our enemy is domestic: rock bottom morale. 
We wonder which of two unpalatable situations we face...either the senior 
leadership does not recognize the low morale, or they do recognize it and do 
not care.  In my opinion, anything we do which distracts or keeps us from 
solving the morale problem is tantamount to rearranging deck chairs on the 
Titanic.

16.  The report repeatedly suggests that military service is not fun anymore. 
There is no truer statement.  Most everything we had that made the service 
fun has been taken away from us.  The net result of the loss of fun or job 
satisfaction is a "workaday" attitude.  I see in myself and in more and more 
officers a view of my service as just a job, rather than a way of life. I 
never thought I would see it that way, and was surprised and saddened when I 
did.  The Army I joined is not the Army I am in, and I believe I am betrayed. 
 Idealism has met reality, and those two concepts are too far removed from 
one another.

I am aware that as I have written, my comments have become increasingly 
emotional and urgent.  I have allowed this to happen, and you receive this 
letter without edit.  Those of us who live in this environment day in and day 
out are extremely frustrated, and I wanted you to read that frustration, 
unvarnished.

Finally, one of the "things" that frustrates me most is the lack of survey 
feedback.  Armies of lab coated technicians and sociologist sally forth from 
Washington annually to poke us, prod us, and test us.  As they snap closed 
their briefcases, they always promise us feedback.  In seventeen years, I 
have seen feedback twice, once when Prof.  C.  Moskos provided me some 
directly at my request, and once when I saw your report a few days ago, 
purely by accident.  The average soldier does not demand immediate solutions.
He does, however, harbor the hope that his senior leadership recognizes 
problems and takes positive, effective action to solve them.

Thank you for your time, patience, and study.



TONY  NEWCOMB- (SOA-570L) (SFA-450L) (AFIO-5746L) (POVA#168)
State Outreach Coordinator, VETERANS LEADERSHIP PROGRAM of ILLINOIS
"The only easy day was yesterday" - Special Ops -   "You have never lived 
until you
      have almost died. For those that have fought for it, life has a special 
flavor the 
      protected will never know."